We Live and Work In Space

Dennis Tito and the Inspiration Mars Plan

Dennis Tito (the first space tourist) has continued his entrepreneurial work on a round trip mission to Mars and back. In fact, he has presented it to NASA as a possible new direction for the agency. His report can be found here.

His plan relies heavily on the NASA SLS for launch of the mission hardware, including a NASA Orion module and an extra habitation module to achieve the mission, and at first blush the mission looks exciting. However, some doubts (read: many doubts) actually remain on how this would be implemented, as discussed here at the Behind The Black blog.

It has been suggested that someone, or multiple someone’s, take a good, hard look at Tito’s plan, catalog and quantify the holes in it, and send it back to him for explanation. It may be a pipe dream, while also holding some merit, so why shouldn’t we take some time to determine what is right and what is wrong with the plan?